The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to reference signal transmission in wireless communications with multiple receivers.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems. A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may each be referred to as a user equipment (UE).
Wireless multiple-access technologies have been adopted in various telecommunication standards to provide a common protocol that enables different wireless devices to communicate on a municipal, national, regional, and even global level. An example telecommunication standard is Long Term Evolution (LTE). LTE is designed to improve spectral efficiency, lower costs, improve services, make use of new spectrum, and better integrate with other open standards. LTE may use OFDMA on the downlink (DL), single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) on the uplink (UL), and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology.
Wireless communications may be supported with control signals and reference signals (such as a control reference signal (CRS)). In some cases, a base station may transmit a reference signal that a receiver, such as a UE, may use to demodulate an associated DL transmission. In some cases, a relatively small amount of reference signaling may be provided, and a receiver operating in conditions where received signals may be relatively weak, such as a UE operating at an edge of a coverage area of a base station, may not be able to successfully demodulate and decode a DL transmission based on the relatively small amount of reference signaling. This may result in delays due to reduced throughput to a UE.